Talking Heads' Post-Mortem: 'All Wrong, All the Time' nytimes.com
You're sounding a bit like a talking head these days, Dwight. Sorry to pollute the forum with that nasty, evil NYT again instead of local hero Drudge, but a few people are showing a little humility about their past predictions. This little survey also says something about the "liberal media" canard that's always a subtext around here.
Newt Gingrich may have emerged the biggest loser in Tuesday's election, but Washington's political pundits are running a close second, many of them having predicted since late January that the American public would sooner or later turn on President Clinton.
The analysts, commentators and reporter-prognosticators, who have become a ubiquitous feature of the news media landscape, almost without exception predicted wrongly that the Republicans would come through the election with a tighter grip on Congress (and, by implication, on Clinton's fate).
"We were all wrong, all the time," said George Stephanopoulos, the ABC commentator and former aide to Clinton. "It's true and we probably ought to admit it." He said the commentators consistently misread "the public feeling on the entire issue of Monica and impeachment." . . .
And William Kristol, the editor and publisher of The Weekly Standard, who had predicted in recent months that both Clinton and the Democrats were "doomed," said ruefully, "I think I'm not as smart as I thought I was, or at least as I pretended to think I was.
"Everything these days is so over-interpreted and over-explained, it's useful to be reminded that these things are hard to predict," Kristol said. "The key thing now to remember is that just as one's facile predictions were wrong, one's facile explanations after the fact are as likely to be wrong." . . .
Hunt said the public long ago "knew exactly what Clinton was and what he had done" and made judgments that many journalists "didn't get." The public concluded that while they might not like or trust Clinton, he was a pretty good president and they did not want to impeach him.
But members of the media did not accept those conclusions. "Because in a way it ended the story," Hunt said. "And a whole lot of people who didn't have the advantage of covering Watergate thought this is going to be my one and I don't want it to end prematurely."
Personally, I don't even think Clinton is a particularly good President. I do give him credit for bearing up pretty well in the face of an orchestrated campaign of political hatred that I've never seen the likes of. Including Watergate. But the whole "character" issue has been flogged to death since the beginning of the '92 primary campaign, when Clinton made his vague statements about a troubled marriage on 60 minutes. Some here seem to think just a little more flogging of the dead horse will turn it around. Could be, but I'm not holding my breath anymore.
Oh, and Dwight, no matter how many times you say it, Janet Reno didn't send Ken Starr in as Grand Inquisitor. The judges originally appointed moderate Robert Fiske, but the red meat crowd couldn't handle that little bit of moderation. So former Sen. Lauch Faircloth and fellow good Christian Jesse Helms went to see one of the judges, and a few days later Fiske was out. That turned it around, then we got to see how an investigation should be run, with a long running mockery of the "secret" Grand Jury proceedings. All for the good of the country, right, Dwight?
For Clintoon, this was not enough. He evidently spent his days dreaming of the next phonesex session with Monica. I'm still incredulous that he actually took at least two phone calls, and then unzipped. While many of Clintoon's supporters will want to shrug this off, and claim that the electorate does also, I think they are reading the electorate wrong. Clintoon has degraded the Office as no other President has ever done, and then lied his silly ass off to cover up his cheap antics with a silly girl. That is Clintoon's legacy.
While some like Schuh reads these words and thinks I have a vitriolic hatred of Clinton, such a conclusion is ridiculous. I simply disapprove of Clintoon's high-school behavior, which he was obviously ashamed of enough to lie about.
Uh huh. I think you're ridiculous, Dwight. The first paragraph sounds pretty much like vitriolic hatred to me. Clintoon, very mature there Dwight, you good Christian you. You wouldn't want to demonize a politician you disagree with, would you? Had to go back and reread the titillating Starr report again, eh, Dwight? Did you especially enjoy the "cigar penetration" scene? I couldn't comment on any of that, of course, like many others, I got enough lurid detail from secondary sources. Like Newt said, "I mean I totally underestimated the degree to which people would just get sick of 24-hour-a-day talk television and talk radio and then the degree to which this whole scandal became just sort of disgusting by sheer repetition." Or perhaps Newt had it all wrong, Dwight. A little more repetition will put the Grand Inquisition over the top, though, right, Dwight? Your little rant also makes your "felonius perjury" chant sound a bit hollow. Hang Clinton any way possible sounds more like it. No vitriolic hatred there, nosirree. It would be ridiculous to say that. Only Democrats are partisan, and I'm the only "partisan hater" here. Right, Dwight? You good Christian you? |
